The Third Part of Four

There was always this story swirling around in the author’s head. It had been ruminating for years, trapped within, trying to get out for all its might. He tried to get it on paper, to make some sort of cohesive meaning but to no avail. He tried every drug he deemed safe to enter his “temple” of a body—mushrooms, pills, grass, acid—and turned on every type of music known to man all at the same time. Hoping a spew of fiction and energy would emerge from his crooked maw, he found his throat simply constipated with other people’s work…other people’s thoughts. Listening to the ‘Let it Be’ lp on repeat and smoking bingie after bingie could no more loosen his imagination than … who the fuck knows.

His story’s main character, an unnamed hero in a crisis—living in the city in the midst of a complete mental breakdown…depression ravages his body like a virus, all he can do is smoke drugs and wander the city aimlessly plugged into his mp3, tuned out from the heavy traffic and construction of the city’s heart. Throughout the story, our hero visits people throughout his neighborhood—his pot dealer, the yoga instructor, the dry cleaner soon realizing each is a different deity. He speaks to Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, whatever the fuck else. It was a great idea. Such a great idea.

This idea percolated and bubbled about the author’s mind for years. He could never write anything else being so obsessed with the completion of his masterpiece. Everyone would read this and become enlightened…a goal so steep there would be no other answer but failure…a certain failure that built up in his throat and continued to his hands. He was embarrassed

After seventy-five years the author was on his deathbed. He couldn’t figure out how the story should go. He finally knew the characters and the events but couldn’t decide on an order to any of it. He didn’t want to throw it together on the fly but he knew he didn’t have too much time left. The author figured it out and died shortly after.